Sugar Candy
Two cupfuls sugar, one cupful water, one wineglassful vinegar, one tablespoonful butter. Cook ten or fifteen minutes.--Mrs. Dr. J. Sugar Candy.
Three cupfuls sugar, half a cupful vinegar, half a cupful water, juice of one lemon. Boil without stirring, till brittle. Pour on a buttered dish and pull till white and light.--Mrs. McG.
Two versions of the same pulled sugar candy, both written for cooks who judged doneness by dropping syrup in cold water. A thermometer replaces all the guesswork here.
- A wineglassfulIn American receipt books of this period a wineglass is reckoned at about 2 fl oz, or 1/4 cup. It is one of the least standardized measures in the book, so treat it as approximate.
- "Cook ten or fifteen minutes" is not a doneness testTime depends entirely on your pan width and burner. The first recipe wants the same result as the second, which gives the actual test: boiled until a drop of syrup is brittle, roughly the hard-crack range on a thermometer, about 300-310F.
- Do not stirMrs. McG. is explicit and it applies to both. Once the sugar has dissolved, stirring drags crystals up the pan wall and back into the syrup, and the whole batch turns grainy. Wash the sides down with a wet brush instead.
- Why the vinegar and lemon are thereBoth are acids, and they invert some of the sucrose into glucose and fructose as it boils. That mixture of sugars resists crystallizing, which is what lets the finished candy stretch rather than snap into sand. They are function, not flavor, though a little sharpness carries through.
- ButterThe tablespoon in the first recipe goes in with everything else and softens the pull. Use unsalted; salted butter at 300F will make itself known.
- Pouring outA buttered marble slab or a buttered rimmed baking sheet, well chilled beforehand, is better than a dish. Let the sheet cool until you can just handle the edges, then fold the mass inward from the outside with buttered hands.
- Pulling till whiteThe color change is air, not sugar: repeated folding and stretching works fine bubbles into the candy so it goes from amber and translucent to opaque ivory. It takes ten to fifteen minutes of real work, and the candy stiffens as it cools, so two pairs of hands help.
- YieldThe first batch makes roughly a pound; the second, with half again as much sugar, makes proportionately more. Cut the finished rope into short pieces with buttered scissors and wrap them individually in wax paper, or they will weld together within a day.
Pulled sugar candy of this kind was standing entertainment as much as confectionery: the nineteenth-century taffy pull was a parlor amusement, and receipt books print it among the sweets a household could produce from staples always on hand. The name given here, plain "Sugar Candy," reflects exactly that -- no molasses, no nuts, no chocolate, just sugar, water, an acid and a little butter. Note that the book prints two contributed versions back to back under the same heading, each credited to a different contributor by initial, side by side and unreconciled.